The novel is called 'Metropolitan Haunt'. It's set in Sydney, Aus. The central character is an aspiring goth and poet. The city has been more or less abandoned (seemingly), and it's all set at night. Tell me what you think.



Chapter Sixteen

Hyde Park was drenched. A deep shroud of rain permeated everything. All around, only streaked darkness could be seen. The park lights gleamed off the pavement with bullets of water. Marquis ran through the park, perforating the slick paths with his combat boots. He found the awning of a closed subway entrance. Why did he bother to come out tonight?
He looked around. Dense, rheumy darkness. Apart from a few lonesome streetlights, and the sandstone silhouettes of department stores, he couldn’t see much. The rain seemed to goad the lights with a pertinacious mist. He ran a hand through his limp, black hair, and shook the wetness from his palm.
There were no cars. No buses. Everything was dead. The only major sound was the expansive drumming of the cold, grey shower. As far as he could tell, he was alone. A caged newspaper headline that someone had probably forgotten to remove held a wilting page. Once or twice a minute, a low, brassy rumble could be heard somewhere down in the subway tunnel, whispering up the gated steps behind him.
Down the road, something moved within the layers of dark rain.
A thin silhouette of a human figure. It had turned a corner onto his side of
Elizabeth Street. The shape was unprotected from the wet, and was moving at a steady pace. Long, easy strides. As it passed under the streetlights, its skin gleamed with a slick grey pallor. It headed towards Marquis.
He couldn’t make out the shape’s features, except that it was thin. In the face, the cheekbones stood out, almost skeletal. It drew closer and closer to Marquis. He scanned the street again. No one else. Closer, the figure loomed now. It grew more life-size with each stride. Marquis hid a clenched fist in his coat pocket and braced himself for the worst.
Finally it approached. A dripping, grey arm stretched out to him. He flinched, but the figure had got him by the arm. It gave him a rough pat on the shoulder.
‘How’s it goin’ mate!’
Marquis sighed relief. ‘You scared the shit out of me, man.’
Blayde cackled wildly, nodding, looking this way and that. ‘Bloody pissin’ down tonight, hey?’
‘Yeah, it’s pretty heavy.’ He tried to keep his voice calm, not too cocky.
Blayde just nodded, looking around again, drumming his hands on his severely
faded once-black-now-metal-colour jeans. His hair was back to the ghost-white and black spiky.
A pause. A low, scratchy rumble far in the background.
‘Yeah, I saw you, mate,’ Blayde said, leering. ‘I saw you out the front of that bloody church thing.’
Huh? ‘St Mary’s?’
‘Is that what it’s called?’
‘…I think so.’ What the hell was Blayde talking about? Then he thought, He
saw me?
Blayde laughed. That rapid, insane cachinnation. It made Marquis a little uncomfortable. Then he stopped, and suddenly looked hard at the Goth. ‘That bitch was playing you like a puppet!’ he snapped. Then came that laugh again. ‘You’re into that shit deep, aren’t ya mate?’
‘No…I’m in control.’ He felt mildly abashed, and added quickly, ‘That was a while ago anyway.’
Blayde was gazing out into the heavy rain. ‘No such thing,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
He didn’t answer. He rubbed his fingers and produced a lit cigarettefrom out of nowhere. He stood on the edge of the sheltered pavement, drawing on the smoke. ‘Oi, mate!’ he shouted.
Marquis wished this guy wouldn’t talk like that. Blayde turned round and leered at him.
‘What?’ Marquis asked.
‘You heard of Queens Circle?’
‘No.’
‘I reckon you’d go for that shit.’ That brusque cackle again.
‘Well…what is it?’ he asked, only out of politeness.
‘Let’s take a walk, mate,’ he said, grinning. ‘I’ll tell ya all about it.’ And before Marquis could decline, Blayde was halfway across the road, yelling, ‘Come on! I’ll show ya!’
Marquis sighed, and then ran across the slick road to catch up.
Blayde led him round the corner onto George. Barely a soul in sight through the harsh sheets of rain. ‘Aw yeah, what is it ya do exactly? You know, when you’re not mopin’ round the city like a stray little dog.’
Marquis cleared his throat. ‘I’m a poet.’
‘Yeah? What name do you use for that?’
He told him.
‘Yeah?’ Blayde said. ‘You and your fucken names.’
‘Yeah,’ Marquis said, and then thought for a second before adding, ‘You into poetry?’
Blayde grinned again, leering. ‘I’m into a lot of things.’
The wet shroud pattered loudly against the Goth’s leather, and he was brushing himself off in vain. For a couple of minutes, neither spoke. Marquis was becoming increasingly curious.
‘So…’ he said. ‘Where are we going, exactly?’
Blayde grinned and nodded, flickering his cigarette stub into the flooded gutter.
‘Mate, Queens Circle is like…like a fucken…place of pilgrimage, y’know? Like…’ he tilted his head back, unblinking in the downpour, as if searching for the words. ‘It’s like the dark palace of those Women Of The Night.’ He laughed. ‘Where only the hardcore go.’
‘Where is it?’ Marquis was no longer brushing himself off and was looking hard at Blayde.
Just cackling again, and patting the poet’s shoulder. He never stopped grinning. ‘Underground, mate. Underground. In the subway.’
By this time they had reached a street entrance which descended into Town Hall station. Right across the street, that temple itself peered over them. The entrance was gated closed late at night, and padlocked. Blayde lifted his foot and slammed it against the gate. It busted inwards with a grating crash like a car accident. Marquis endeavoured not to let an impression register on his face. Town Hall temple tolled the hour with melody.
‘Come on!’ Blayde said.
He followed him down the slippery steps. Dingy water puddled at the bottom.
‘The subways are always unmanned at night,’ Marquis muttered a known fact to himself.
‘No shit,’ Blayde chimed in.
‘But the trains still run.’
‘Mr Fucken Obvious.’
He wanted to tell him it was ‘Captain’, not ‘Mr.’, but dared not. Town Hall Underground was illuminated in warm but anaemic light. The electronic timetables gaped with blank electric blue faces. Every ten or so seconds, trains whined and rumbled through the tunnels.
‘Got any change on ya, mate?’ Blayde asked.
‘Nah, nothing,’ he lied.
‘Oh well!’ Blayde shouted, then slammed his boot-clad foot against a Coke
machine. The machine rattled and dispensed two cans. He tossed one to Marquis who privately wondered about that, and forgot to note what platform he was being led down to.
‘Marquis,’ Blayde said, half smiling to himself and nodding slightly. ‘Nice outfit, by the way.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Like mine? I put it together meself. What d’ya think?’
‘Cool, it’s cool. Very…uh…alternative.’
Blayde grinned at him, nodding. ‘Fucken poet.’
Marquis didn’t get it.
The acrid, metallic aroma of the subway hit him. He always wondered what that actually was. The platforms themselves seemed to reek of it. He watched Blayde knock back his Coke in one go then pitch the empty can onto the tracks. The cold aluminium was snatched out of sight by a grey train pulling in. The train screeched and hissed as it drew to a halt. Fuliginous doors flung open with a rubbery flap.
‘What station are we headed to, Blayde?’ He didn’t much like the perpetual grin of his spectral companion.
‘Fucked if I can tell ya, mate,’ he said. ‘Alls I know is, somewhere along the
subway routes, there’s a bloody eerie station. Spooky shit, I tell ya. Only the dedicated can find it.’
Marquis hopped onto the carriage, hands deep in his trenchcoat pockets. ‘Well…’ Looking around for Blayde.
Gone. The platform was empty again. ‘Wha–’ The carriage doors whipped shut in his face. The train revved and started with a creaking jolt. He caught himself, pressing a hand to the doors.
He took a seat amidst the vacant rows. Alone. He wondered what happened to everyone. This, he thought, was like one of those dreams where he was the last one on earth…Cool. He let out a semi-relaxed sigh and put his feet up on the cracked vinyl seat. One of the overhead ceiling lights flickered with intermittent buzzing. A half-empty bottle of vodka and watermelon rattled and banged under the seats.
Graffiti profanities faced him from all angles, like insecure challenges.
‘Strange days’ by the Doors, played in his head. Glossy blackness, interjected with flitting tunnel lights, pressed itself against the windows from outside. Marquis gazed at his reflection, and listened to the faint grinding noises of the train speeding over the tracks. Nervous. Just a little. Do I really want to find this “Queens Circle”? he asked himself. Looking around, Well…I’m here, on the train, aren’t I? Breathing hard through his teeth. His jaw was beginning to ache.
Jabs of screeching. The train was slowing down. Electric light flooded in from outside the carriage. Pale blue and white tiles. Red and white benches. Giant faces, insensible, on billboards. A sign on the wall: Wynyard. He relaxed a little. Wynyard was normal. He understood this station. Is this the train he was really supposed to be on? he wondered. Blayde put him on it…so it must be.
Here, there were some people on the platforms. Standing around. Paper-reading, billboard-gazing, tunnel-watching people. None of them stepped on his train. In fact, nobody in the sparse crowd seemed even remotely conscious of the train. Probably just his imagination.
Marquis liked these underground stations. Subterranean plazas of light, he thought. The carriage doors whipped shut again, and the train moved off. He slid one of the windows open a crack. Warm, tangy air wafted in. His carriage once again plunged into a dark, humid tunnel. It gave him a strange thrill, and he bent backwards, stretching his spine against the stiff vinyl. I’m in control, he thought. I’m in control.
Two or three minutes passed. Another plaza of light emerged. The sign this time read, Museum. A few scattered commuters stood around, descended escalators, or just sat on the benches staring at nothing. Again, no one boarded Marquis’ train. And again, he noticed, no one even seemed aware of its presence. Laughing, as the train pulled out again, he grimace-smiled to one old man who was staring at nothing, to see if he would notice. The man stared on, oblivious. Marquis blinked, shook his head, and lost his amusement.
Looking out into the brilliant blackness, he suddenly grinned. ‘Well, well,’ he said aloud. ‘Sydney, where are you taking me?’ The train scraped and revved, hustling through the tunnels. Then something occurred to him. That last station, Museum. That doesn’t come after Wynyard. As far as he knew, that would be a completely different line. He thought, There must be some hidden tunnels and connections. Yes? An underground labyrinthe? Cool. He grinned wider. Well, if that was the case, then this train must eventually stop at this mysterious Queens Circle.
Another station emerged. Couldn’t locate any signs at first. ‘C’mon,’ he said, scrutinizing the platforms. Then, the faded word, Edgecliff, on a bench. A baggy-eyed man in a suit sat down on the bench, obscuring the name, and staring straight through Marquis’ carriage. ‘Damn it.’
Standing up now. He was no longer surprised by the few commuters’ insensibility. The train creaked and jarred on its way. It was just him and the train that whined and ricketed on its way with what seemed a solemn, mechanical consciousness.
Another station. He forgot the name as soon as read it. It was not Queens Circle. The deluge of artificial light disappeared once more. Can’t sit down. He was pacing back and forth through the carriage. The clapping of his leather boots sounded loud to him. He felt his face with the back of his hands. Skin felt flushed. He remembered the last thing Blayde had said to him. “Only the dedicated can find it.” ‘What the hell did that mean?’ he said aloud. Well, whatever it meant, there was no way he was getting off this train until it turned up. Which reminded him: what happened to his Coke?
Minutes passed. The train was speeding up, he felt, and went to an open window to catch the breeze. The air had changed. Tangier now. More metallic. The glassy blackness outside the windows was thickening. The usual white security lights had ceased to flit by. The train shrieked and quivered, and he fell back into a seat as it jolted. At last it was beginning to slow down.
The light flooded in again. But this wasn’t as bright as the others before it. It was a weak, anaemic illumination. Filthy two-tone white and red walls were tinged with green. The tiles reminded him of public toilets. Marquis was devouring everything with his eyes, himself pressing right to the carriage doors. He felt a strange rush of excitement as the painted words, shadowed but clear, rolled slower and slower by as the train pulled in. The silver train groaned and hissed as it finally stopped alongside the platform. Queens Circle.
Marquis alighted with tentative steps, as though testing the floor for its realness. He thought he heard a faint, distant groaning somewhere. A rank, humid odour, like stale seawater, hung in the air like some old festering bed sheet. It hit him right away. Looking around, at least half the lights were either broken or flickering. Their casings, flush with the roof, were dusty. Some appeared cobwebbed inside.
Of course, this meant that shadows were everywhere. And they were. Contorted, indefinable shapes. It was hard to see through some. Predatory, he thought. Predatory shadows lurking behind and around old, faded benches that bore this place’s name clearly. They lurked around the mildewed-tinted columns. And they moved as Marquis moved around.
A few disgusting lumps of rags lay across some of the dirty benches. They looked almost human, supporting bottles in brown paper bags. He realized, of course, what they really were, but he couldn’t get the creeping illusions out of his mind. Illusions? Let’s just keep moving. Under the buzz and flashes of the roof lights, he could’ve sworn they looked mortuary and skeletal. Monstrous and hollow-eyed.
The Goth suddenly felt more self-conscious than usual in his loud attire. He kept his gaze low, and pocketed his hands. The beating in his bony chest was getting louder to him. Quicker too, realizing that there were no other commuters whatsoever on the platform. No staff for that matter either, obviously. Obviously, he told himself. Why now? Underground. The roof of this place felt intimately low. Boxed in. Entombed.
A faded, giant billboard, on the opposite tunnel wall, engulfed in shadow.
Toothpaste ad, peeling in dark flaps. A woman’s face. Prominent, dirty white teeth, grinning at him. His footfalls padded, lonesome, over the tiles.
Groaning. A whisper. At first, it sounded like deep wailings, like a dying animal, but more expansive. He couldn’t tell. The further he got down the platform, the thicker it sounded. A groaning. A howling. Faint, but deep. He thought it sounded like zombies. The laugh was caught in his throat. The howling fluctuated, softer, louder, carrying with it, a dank, fetid breeze. It played with his hair like a grimy hand. At last, he discovered what it was. The wind was funnelling underground via the escalator shaft. Down, he noticed. Instead of upwards like normal. ‘Like normal,’ he whispered.
The escalator was steep. He couldn’t clearly see the head of the stairs that perpetually grumbled in their brain-dead chain. The uninvited breeze blew harder on him as he was being ferried up the shaft, and he had to grip the black rubber handrail to keep from falling down. His entrails squirmed. He asked himself, What have I
done? What have I gotten myself into?
The latrinal white tiled walls continued the entire way up. Boxed, electric ads eyed him. Watching. Always watching Marquis. The light bulbs inside them either flickered or were broken just like on the platform. All the ads were damaged in strange ways. One ad was for a mobile phone. It was the face of a typical, blonde, male surfie holding the phone to his ear. Both his eyes had been punched out. Two holes with jagged plastic rims. Something like battery acid had trickled and dried from out the holes, streaking the surfie’s face like ferruginous tears. Its incandescence was absent.
Marquis was growing more and more uncomfortable with the climbing altitude.
But something, a curiosity, was drawing him along. A curiosity that was near
feverish. He knew it. I’m in control, he told himself. I’m in control. I just want to have a look. Nothing wrong with having a look. Won’t hurt anybody. Not me. I’m in control. I can look if I want. I ought to even. I…I must. He was hardly blinking, unaware of his thickening breaths.
He looked at another ad. It was for women’s underwear. It was a bra and panty-clad brunette, climbing out of bed, with a serene expression on her face. A large hole had been punched through her chest. The box flickered in a dusty neon blue through the two-dimensional woman.
At last, he reached the head of the escalator. He jumped the metal teeth where the stairs vanished under. Rubbing what felt like smoggy sweat from his brow and face, he moved slowly but steadily forward. Eyes darting back and forth. No one around. Not a breath nor soul. But there was a sound. He thought he could hear…people.
The ground floor of the station did not look safe. A green tint tainted the walls and floor like slime. But it was not really slime, for each of his steps were perfectly controlled without slipping. The sounds of him moving around–leather-clad legs swishing for attention–were making him more unsettled.
More damaged and faulty ads looked darkly upon him. Still looking around, the
thought occurred to him: for an unpopulated station, why isn’t there any graffiti? It was, he thought, for want of a better word, clean. Warmer breeze touched him, and he realized something. There was no sound of rain coming from outside. The smell of stale alcohol lingered.
He glanced around quickly before jumping the ticket barriers. A crinkled, yellowed page of newspaper lay on the floor. It exuded the acrid tang of old ink.
He could still hear many soft, almost whispering, voices, but he couldn’t dissect them. If they were really voices at all and not just his imagination. There was a small flight of stairs heading out to whatever lay waiting outside. As he climbed them, the panorama spread open wide before him.
It did not look like night. It didn’t look like day, either. It was twilight. The sky was a mud-thick veil of cloud. Green-black, it appeared. Everything was suffused with green. Emerald green, he thought. It’s all emerald green! It was so intense; it was as if he were wearing dark green tinted sunglasses. The tint coated the pavement, the road, and the buildings.
The buildings looked like run-down, minimalist warehouses. Cracks, like painted lightning, spread down them in places. The windows were all tinted a stygian black. It may have been simply his imagination, but some things seemed to move behind the framed glass. Marquis could feel eyes on him, more than usual, and his palms were getting damp. I don’t like this, he thought, whispering to himself mentally. He didn’t want to think to loudly. There was something.
Something lay on the sidewalk.
Something, he thought, can’t keep quiet, quiet, now they’ll hear me! Don’t be an idiot nobody can hear because nobody is here no body. Body. What’s that lying on the pavement? Don’t be an idiot it can’t be. What is that? It can’t be. Lying on the pavement.
A man on his face. Not moving. Why isn’t he moving? Green, more green what is with the...
Empty can rattling in the gutter. What, oh shit is that guy dead? A real dead body? The skin, the skin is all sunken. I can see…what? I see the bones in his hands like the skin had melted around them. Ugh! Putrescence. Sick. Putrescence, green all over him, half the side of his face. I can see. Rotten. Someone is watching. The rot. The rot.
The flesh is glazed. Glaze. A word I’ll never use again, I’m sure, I should think…Look away! The carcass was awash in green gemstone putrefaction. He stepped far back away from the body, not wanting to look anymore.
He wasn’t to see the last of decay. Along the street, lying up against brick walls, lying here and there up against light poles, carcasses were everywhere. They all were draped in oversize clothes the hue of dead leaves–mossy dead leaves. Strangely enough, there was no stinking rot. Everywhere, everything just smelled like stale alcohol. Stale vodka screwdrivers.
Marquis wandered halfway down the street. Side streets, with bare oaks busting up through the gutters, wound off into alleys. He cringed and stopped looking.
Something watching.
On both sides of the road, there were what he supposed were nightclubs. Neon rods skirted the entrances. Mostly busted here. A deep, green-tinted red flashed now and then. The signs were all out. Strange names, he thought, too loud. The Naked Mirror. Carnal House.
One, he saw now, to his side. The Crimson Spider. Within the deep shade under the awnings–shade, until up close, he could barely see through—
Eyes on him.
Under this shade, here, a carcass of an old man sat on a stool at the front door. In vigil, Marquis thought. From what he could make out from the deep glaze of green, the man had a severe excavation of his throat. Spinal cord and lower jaw protruded, a yellow-green. The head lolled and softly rocked in the vacant breeze as if in sleep.
Look away.
More noise. That whispering. And something else. No traffic. The roads and alleys were void of traffic, and there was no sound of it in the distance. Dead leaves skittered along the pavement. He didn’t have time to look at any more signs. He heard a noise right behind him. A wet, scraping sound, like raw meat dragging…
Something creeping.
What, he thought, What… As he turned around, he quickly stepped back. It was only one of the carcasses. Nothing to worry about. It was crawling after him. Crawling…after me! He swore out loud, and then stopped from doing it again.. The thing made a rough gurgling sound and creaked its neck to look up at Marquis. It’s looking up…No. No, don’t look at me. What’s it doing now? It’s…It’s crying! Ugh! Look at its eyes–no, don’t look!
Tears streaked the wizened face of the man crawling over the pavement. Tears of
yellow bile.
Eyes on him.
I’m gonna be sick, he thought. No, don’t…What…What is that noise now?
Vagrants, lolled against the deep emerald green walls and light posts, squirmed. Long rasping groans came from them all. He did not like this at all. They were all moving. Some were trying to climb to their feet, staggering like drunks. One suddenly saw Marquis, and blinked wildly. Bile frothed from its mouth. His mouth, he realized. They’re all men! What? No…no, no, no. He was realizing something and didn’t want to think about it.
This, he thought, This can’t be real. He stumbled. Something hissed near his foot, and he leapt away. His own skin was awash in emerald green.
Something else. A deep, thudding dance music.
Then, something else too, caught his attention: figures.
Shadowed figures were standing, dead still, against the walls. All along the walls. On both sides of the street, they stood near the doors of every single nightclub, like statues. Camouflaged statues. Camouflaged like some kind of wall-spiders, he thought. His mind was spinning. As far as he could tell, there were a good thirty to forty nightclubs up and down this long street. But he could’ve just imagined it.
Marquis had walked past them, not seeing them before. The incessant dance beat throbbed around him, louder now. Taunting him. He could see them all now. The shadows leered at him. Eyes all over him. All at once, the shadows shifted.
He squinted to make out their features. Women! Women, all emaciated. Satin, skin-tight shorts, skirts, skeletal midriffs. Skeletons, he thought. Skeletons! They looked like skeletons… their skin. Their skin, their skin wizened. Rubbery filthy skin.
Sick with horror. The eyes. All sunken. Sunken cheekbones. Sunken, sunken. Skeletal. Leering at Marquis.
Next to him, the carcass that lolled outside The Crimson Spider moved. Its eyes glinted as it craned its head up to look at Marquis. Its lips drew back over its black gums and algae-filmed teeth into a leering grin. A gurgling noise came in jagged breaths or laughs, and chartreuse slime glistened over its lower jaw. ‘Come on,’ it suddenly drawled. A sickly, taunting drawl. ‘Come on…mate.’ Then the gurgling laughter again.
Marquis backed away out onto the road. Looking all around, the corpses, and the shadowed women, shifted. Dance music pounded in his ears and all around him like air. The women made him panic the most. He could feel their eyes. Hungry for him.
Hunger. Malice. ‘What hell…’ he said aloud. ‘Oh, what have I done?’
The women were moving. They were slowly, steadily, moving toward him.
Marquis’ skin crawled. His heart thudded with the dance music. It wasn’t happy music. It was filthy music. It was a sleazy, disgusting rhythm. A vocal whisper, every few beats. Something indefinable. It mocked him. He took a couple of steps back in one direction, stopped, and then backed off in another direction.
Closer now.
Let’s…
Closer.
Let’s get…out…of here…
Marquis snapped into a run. He wasn’t breathing. He just belted himself into a desperate escape.
Dance music thudded and pulsed loud.
And as though that action of his was an alarm, the women–the entire multitude–flew after him. Marquis could only hear his own boots touching the pavement, and his coat flapping, and the painful beat in his chest mimicked–or was mimicked by–the dance beat. The loud, hammering, panicky throbbing. Sleazy, panicky throbbing. He sprinted for his life. For his soul.
Seconds passed, probably. Something howled through the air, a single, dreamy voice he had heard somewhere before, ‘LoveyoumyfoolIloveyou,’ Marquis got to the station stairs. Diving back into that subway grave, the last clear thing he saw was the painted word, Circle. Finally, almost choking on a desperate intake of air, he reached the escalator.
Something slashed at the back of his arm. He tripped, stumbling forward, pivoting
around and thrusting his elbow. A green, leathery jaw shattered with the sound of splattering mud. It was cold against his skin, even through the leather.
A blur of wavering, dirty light. The slamming against metal steps. Over and
over. Further and further down. A vague stinging sensation.

(c)BrettConway2004

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